AEONTS is seeing a more promising business environment as farm income picks up, wages rise and opex and cost of funds come down. Growing contribution from CLMV subsidiaries will support L-T growth. We maintain BUY with unchanged TP of Bt115 (2.1x FY2016 BVPS).
Helped by better farm income, rising wages. AEONTS' business volume will, we believe, begin to pick up in the second half of this year, backed by the start of a recovery in farm income, plus government measures to help farmers and rising wages. Farm income growth returned to positive at 5% YoY in April, the first month since 2015 and we expect farm income to continue to get better as crop prices improve. Additionally, the cabinet just approved a budget of Bt45bn to help farmers via: 1) support for small business production (Bt38bn); 2) debt moratorium (Bt5.4bn) and 3) rice insurance (Bt2.1bn). It also approved a hike in minimum wage to Bt360-550/day from Bt300/day in five industries, which is expected to take effect in August. We have lifted our loan growth forecast slightly to 8% in FY2016 from 7% and to 10% in FY2017 from 9% vs. 7% in FY2015.